Thebowl.challenge: One game left!

Hola, kiddies. I arrived back at home from one of my semi-yearly pilgrimages to Columbus yesterday, not having checked theblog.net or the super duper thebowl.challenge in several days. So now, a scant two hours from gameti-- urr, the beginning of the yawn-worthy "fellate USC"-fest (Sidenote: Shelley Smith is reporting on her conversation with Leinart's Dad right now on SportsCenter) that the pregame is going to be, I'm going to update everyone on what our little standings are, as well as who should be rooting for whom and who will win if Texas wins and when USC wins.

Rank	Team	Owner	Record	PPR	TOTAL
1	Charlie Weiss is Fat	J. Wise	17-10	1	256
2	Santa's Little Helper	Maw and Paw Moyer	18-9	8	250
3	This is My Entry	P. Wholezinga	17-10	23	247
3	Splatterdome Brady Quinn	J. Moyer	17-10	11	247
3	Steven Scrumptious	J. Maynard	17-10	2	247
6	Jew-Drew Brees	T. Hykes	16-11	8	234
6	Durham	R. Durham	16-11	25	234
8	Unoriginal Bastard	R. Davis	15-12	28	230
9	Nyholm	M. Nyholm	14-13	11	212
10	Tedd E Inge 4 Heisman	S. Mizer	15-12	4	211
11	Wiggly Jiggly's Picklies	Z. Zaret	14-13	15	202
12	LEEEEEROOOOOYYY!	E. Fairchild	12-15	25	198
13	Big Jim Slade's Winners	A. Schill	13-14	13	182
14	Shiny	K. Sandberg	14-13	14	172

Anyway, what does all this mean? (Sidenote #2: Wilbon just predicted a 42-40 final score for tonight's game. I guarun-Goddamn-TEE you that the score won't be that high. People just flat-out don't give a shit about defense, and Texas plays great defense, so an extremely strong facet of their team is being completely ignored. More on this, sort of, later) I examined who everyone picked for tonight's OMG BIG GAME, and discovered that 9 people picked Texas while 5 went with USC. Somewhat surprising. Anyway, if the Tro-men beat Tay-hass, the top 5 of the pick 'em will end up looking like this, barring some unforeseen math dumbassedness from me:

Rank	Team	Owner	Record	PPR	TOTAL
1	Durham	R. Durham	18-10	0	259
2	Splatterdome Brady Quinn	J. Moyer	18-10	0	258
2	Santa's Little Helper	Maw and Paw Moyer	19-9	0	258
2	Unoriginal Bastard	R. Davis	16-12	0	258
5	Charlie Weiss is Fat	J. Wise	17-11	0	256

According to my admittedly rudimentary calculations, we won't end up with nearly the Mongolian clusterfaulk at the top of the leaderboard if a Texas victory results. To wit:

Rank	Team	Owner	Record	PPR	TOTAL
1	This is My Entry	P. Wholezingah	18-10	0	270
2	Charlie Weiss is Fat	J. Wise	18-10	0	257
3	Santa's Little Helper	Maw and Paw Moyer	17-11	0	250
4	Steven Scrumptious	J. Maynard	18-10	0	249
5	Splatterdome Brady Quinn	J. Moyer	17-11	0	247

Hence, despite being in the lead right now, "Charlie Weiss is Fat" has a 0.0% chance of winning this thing. Also, I want to kill ESPN for not recognizing that I picked Alabama to beat Texas Tech, suffering an infuriating loss of 21 points because of my "no pick" in that game. It also bears mentioning that I inexplicably lost my 28, 27, AND 26-point games (Michigan, Auburn, and Georgia, respectively). And I'm still guarunteed of finishing in the top-5 of this thing. You morons.

Also, regarding USC-Texas, and more specifically all the "OMG USC IS THE BEST TEAM EVER EVER EVER EVER" bullshit, here's the link to the slate article I talked about - at length - this week. Huzzah. Go Longhorns. Fuck USC. And the popular sports media.

Huzzah.

Edited at 7:58 to add: Sorry, Texas. I was rooting for you. But Corso just picked the 'Horns to "shock the universe" and beat USC. Fowler agreed, but the damage had already been done. Time to go watch Keith Jackson ruin what will probably be a good game. Again.